J 59 – Report of week 8

D59 – Report of week 8

It has now been eight weeks since we started the expedition. This is the report of week 8.

We made good progress over the past week and set up camp on Sunday evening at altitude of app. 1.350 meters. We are still in sastrugis fields most of the time but it glides a bit better. As mentionned last week we started to ski longer hours – up to 11.5 hours some days – and we skied up to 43 kms a day.

Our goal was to reach our last ressuply waypoint this Sunday – which we just did – in order to take a rest day this Monday. This will be the last rest day of the expedition as we will start again on Tuesday – with probably 11 to 12 hour ski days. Motivation is high to try to reach our ultimate goal and end of the expedition within 14 or 15 days. There are still 580 kms to go to reach Union Glacier.

The rest day will be mostly about sleeping – and it shall not be difficult at all to fall asleep anytime of the day ! And it is of course very important to recover as much as possible during such a day in order to ski long distance and manage the cold and wind during the last stretch of the expedition.

The weather has been quite good so far so let’s hope it will stay good enough until the end of the expedition. Our deadline is Jan. 28 and, as mentionned above, we are planning on 14 to 15 days from Jan. 13 to reach our goal, in order to have 1 or 2 days of flexibility in case of very bad weather (storm).